


The Ghost of Christmas Past

by mlein80



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Flashbacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 21:28:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5601745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mlein80/pseuds/mlein80
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elena wonders why Damon doesn't like to celebrate Christmas anymore. Damon tells her about two Christmasses he has celebrated in the past</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this story before season 6, so I had my own headcanon about when Damon's mother had died. That was obviously a bit earlier than canon eventually learned us.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Damon remembers a Christmas from very long ago.

“Why is it that you don’t want to celebrate Christmas anymore?” Elena had entered the room with two cups of hot chocolate, determined to make Damon celebrate this year. She was sure he’d like it, if he only wanted to admit it to himself.

Damon was sitting in front of the fireplace, making sure there was a fire burning in there. “It has just lost its appeal after all those years, I guess…”

She walked over to him, showing the mug in front of him, until he finally accepted it and looked what was in it.

“Hot chocolate?” He cocked his head and looked her in the eye. “Really? You couldn’t think of anything stronger?”

She smiled a bit, sitting down on the couch, pulling her legs up there as well, wrapping her hands around the mug. “I could think of it, but this belongs to Christmas.” Then her tone suddenly became a bit sadder. “My mom always made it for Jeremy and me when we were younger…”

Damon gave up the attempts to work on the fire, and just sat in front of it, staring at the flames, the mug in one hand. “I was always the one doing that…”, he said with an absent look on his face.

Elena looked surprised. “What?”

Damon suddenly seemed lost in his thoughts. “Making hot chocolate for Stefan and me. Our father… he only insisted we’d go to church with him at Christmas, and be the good little family he wanted us to be. But ever since my mother died… all the cosiness there was around Christmas died as well.”

Elena held her breath, not wanting to interrupt him now, afraid that he’d stop talking.

He shifted his weight a bit, leaned against the wall, pulling up his legs and put one arm around it. “I remember my mother making me a mug of hot chocolate when we came home from church, but since she died, no one did that anymore. So one Christmas, I decided to do it.” A small smile appeared around his lips, as if he had forgotten where he was right now, and back in the days where he was celebrating Christmas, with his brother, and maybe even with his father. “I completely ruined the first attempt of course… I mean, I was about ten, I guess? My father was so mad at me for making such a mess, yelling at me, because a gentleman shouldn’t worry about making a stupid drink, but I figured out what went wrong, and when he was gone to some others of the council, I tried it again, and I managed this time. Stefan loved it… he had never had it before…” He had a smile on his face, still seeing the little boy sniff the mug of chocolate, carefully tasting what was inside of it. He would never forget how his brother had looked when he had tasted the drink for the first time. He took a sip of his own chocolate.

Elena just watched him, liking how his expression had softened. She had the feeling that she saw a little bit of the little boy he must have been back then.

“Since then I made it every year, even without my father getting mad. Although he started to object again the year after… but when he saw that I wasn’t ruining the kitchen again he let it go, even when he never became happy with it.” He snapped back to the here and now, standing up and walking over to the couch, throwing her legs off it, sitting down, and putting her legs in his lap. “But that’s all in the past now. Gone, done with it, not important anymore.” He grinned at her, before taking another sip of his chocolate.

Elena had to laugh about the moustache it created, but knew she had one as well. “But why is it gone? That was something you didn’t have to stop, didn’t you?”

He shrugged. “That was all linked to Stefan, Elena. The moment I started to hate him… Christmas lost its appeal. And it’s too long gone to get it back again, even when we are good with each other now. It’s just… gone or something like that. Completely disappeared.”

Elena shook her head. “I can’t believe that. Something like that can’t just simply disappear. You really don’t have any good memories of Christmas after 1864?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas with Stefan isn't the only thing Damon remembers. There was also a Christmas in jail.

Elena hesitated for a moment, afraid to ask about something she had been thinking about, afraid that it would bring back too many memories that would be too painful. There was this time in his life he had hidden very carefully, and when he finally told her about it, it was only the most necessary. And still, she was curious. “Didn’t you and Enzo celebrate Christmas?”

He looked at her, raising his eyebrows. “That’s one way to ruin a Christmas atmosphere… talking about that time.”

She started to apologize, but he raised his hands. “Actually… we did… but I don’t think I can talk about that with just a hot chocolate…” He pressed his mug in her hands, while he stood up and filled a glass with bourbon, before taking his place on the couch again. “They had a weird sense of humour for the holidays, those Augustines…”, he started. He turned the glass around in his hands, swirling the liquid in it. “Would you believe they actually strung up some decoration down there? We knew exactly when Christmas was approaching, not only because of the radio playing Christmas carols, but also because of the garlands they hung around the cells. Probably to give themselves the feeling for the season, but still, we tried to enjoy it as well. You know how it was down there. Every change was welcome.” He took a sip of the bourbon.  
“On Christmas Eve, they would leave early. My first year there, I saw Enzo relaxing the moment he heard the door close. We wouldn’t see them again until Christmas was over, he told me. It was the only day in the year we were sure we didn’t have to be afraid when the door would open, when they would come back, who they would pick. We sat down next to the bars, telling each other stories. Not the revenge plans we always talked about, not plans of what we would do when we got out of there, but stories of the past. Maybe sometimes even stories we just would have wanted to happen.” He sighed, and Elena stayed very still. Again, he seemed lost in his thoughts, and she got to know a side of him that he rarely allowed her to see. “That was our Christmas gift to each other, I guess. Allowing ourselves to forget where we were, what we were. Forget our numbers, just be Enzo and Damon, and pretend we could celebrate a holiday everyone outside of the walls we were confined in celebrated as well. For one day, we could be normal…” He swirled the glass again, downing the rest of the drink at once. “But it was all a lie. The day after, they would come back, the doctors who had no doubt celebrated with their families, nicely at home, and they would resume what they always did. It was nothing but a facade.”

Elena reached out for his hand, taking it in hers. “But it was partly a good memory, wasn’t it?”

Damon shrugged. He wasn’t sure about what it was. Only that he tried to forget about it as soon as he got out of there.  
“It was a lie, Elena. We were just fooling ourselves… That’s all we ever do with Christmas. Fool ourselves for one day that everything is all right, that this world isn’t as rotten as it in reality is.”

Elena shook her head. “I refuse to believe that. All you need are new memories, a way to replace the ghost of those Christmases that have been with something new, something meaningful. And I’m going to give you that…”

Damon wanted to object, but she didn’t let him. She put down her mug of chocolate next to Damon’s one she had put away a while before that and she leaned over to him, giving him a kiss on the mouth, smiling when she let go again. “And I won’t take no for an answer. It’s time for the Ghost of Christmas yet to come…”

Damon started laughing. “You know that guy wasn’t so nice, don’t you?”

Elena shrugged. “That guy is all we make of him. And we’re going to make him good… you and I. Together.”


End file.
